Newsletter 21st October 2024
Hello fiends
It’s October! The spooky month! Ehhhh, I never really get that vibe. A couple of reasons, really. One is that I’m a horror writer, so it’s always the spooky month for me. Also, I’m Australian, so we’re just going into spring here. October being spooky is, in large part, all about the weather getting cold, the trees losing their leaves, the days getting shorter and the nights longer… all of which is the complete opposite here. Everything is springing into life, the clocks just went forward so it stays light later, it’s getting warmer by the day. It starts to feel spooky here around April.
It’s the same with Christmas, which is a massive pain in the arse most of the time, everyone trying to see everyone and shit closing down for a week. But it never feels Christmassy to me any more. I’ve been Australian for about half my life, but I grew up in the UK. There, October is a cold, dark, wet , spooky month like it’s supposed to be and Xmas is wintery and, well, Christmassy. Here, Xmas happens in the height of summer when it’s hot as fuck and altogether not very merry. Did you know shops and houses spray fake snow in their windows here for Xmas? In the middle of summer? It’s mental.
If you ask me, we should do away with Xmas and go back to an old midwinter festival in our midwinter. That’s the 21st of June. The summer solstice here is December 21st so you can imagine how “Christmassy” that feels. And we should have a spooky Halloween kinda thing in our autumn, sometime after the end of March.
Anyway, despite the spring in the air and the obvious ranty pants nature of my opinions, I’ll do my best to celebrate the one time of year when the rest of the population embraces the way we live all the time.
Happy Halloween!
With that in mind, check this out. OzTober is running again. Kicking off this weekend, there’s a huge sale of Australian and New Zealand horror, fantasy and sci-fi ebooks all at only 99c. That includes my book, The Gulp. You can find all you need and see all the books in the sale here:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/OZtober204/qzclk5vu1c
And talking of The Gulp, if you happen to still frequent Facebook, there’s a huge group there called Books of Horror and they frequently run brawls where books go head to head in a kind of indie tournament. It’s all in good fun, but if a book happens to get into one of the brawls, that means a lot of extra sales and readers. The next brawl in November is called the Short Smack and it’s for short stories, novellas and collections. I’ve entered The Gulp. If you fancy joining up in that group, you’ll find all kinds of good horror book chat, and you’ll also be able to help me get The Gulp up into the final brawl when the voting happens. Pretty please and thank you! But you need to join the group soon, because they close to new members when any brawl voting starts. You’ll find it here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/526308964218819
Last time I mentioned that The Leaves Forget was up for a Ditmar Award. That book has been really well-recognised, having garnered a finalist spot for the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novella AND Best Fantasy Novella, and the Ditmar Award for Best Novella or Novelette. It didn’t win any of them, sadly, but the nomination really is reward enough. And not winning the Ditmar means I maintain my position as top Never-Winner. Anyone who’s been nominated for an award but hasn’t won it is a never-winner. I’ve been a finalist in the Ditmar Awards 15 times, but have yet to win one. The closest other never-winner there is Ben Peek with 11. So I can’t lose! It would be nice to add that trophy to my shelf one day. Never say never. In the meantime, I’m collecting enough finalist pins to eventually make a suit of armour.
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However, what I did win was another Australian Shadows Award, which is just fantastic. I won the short fiction category for my story, “All the Eyes That See”, which was published in issue 42 of Cosmic Horror Monthly. It’s such a thrill, I really didn’t think I’d win. That makes five Shadows Awards trophies on my shelf now, which is just nuts. It makes up for not winning the novella category in the other awards this year.
Talking of novellas (the segues in this newsletter are flowing smoothly) I’m still serialising the first draft of my new one over on Patreon if you’d like an early sneak peek at that. https://www.patreon.com/alanbaxter
Given the changing nature of things online, I’ve been trying to centralise stuff more at my website. I’ve always maintained that a writer needs a good website more than anything else. Relying on social media as a form of communication is fine, but you need something that’s yours and not subject to the whims of billionaire manbabies for people to find you professionally. I’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of help with my website (thank you, Michael!) but even the simplest page online makes a huge difference. And while having your own domain is good, you don’t even have to have that. Just a free site with a bio, a list of your books with links and, most importantly, contact details is all you really need. I’ve recently updated the contact page on my site as I’d been using linktree before and it occurred to me that I can recreate the same thing on my site and not need an external page. Have a look here and see what you think. Please let me know if any links are broken. https://alanbaxter.com.au/contact/
Supanova
I’m excited to say I’ll be hitting the Supanova circuit again in November. If you’re anywhere Adelaide on November 2nd and 3rd or Brisbane on November 9th and 10th come and say hi! Loads of other great guests will be there and Brisbane is the 100th Supanova, so that’s going to be a wild party. All the details here: https://www.supanova.com.au/
What I’ve Been Enjoying
I’ve finally been catching up with The Orville. For the most part it’s surprisingly good, with some great storylines and superb production values. But while I know it’s Seth MacFarlane’s thing, I simply cannot buy that baby-faced weirdo as a starship captain. Everything else is great though. (But don’t get me started on MacFarlane’s beached-fish-gasping-for-air kissing style.) Regardless, it goes places I didn’t expect and has more pathos that I thought it would while still carrying some great humour. I also enjoyed the end of The Umbrella Academy. It got a bit ridiculous and they obviously pulled a lot of the story out of thin air, but it was a no holds barred finale that worked well.
I read a couple of short books recently – The Pram by Joe Hill and The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw – that I really enjoyed. It’s hard to say anything without giving away too much, but I recommend them both. And I’m currently halfway through The Reformatory by Tananarive Due and it’s fantastic. I’m really loving it. No wonder it landed the Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award this year. I can’t wait to get back to it.
Okay, that’s all from me for now. Thanks for hanging out. Drop me a line or hit me up on socials for a chat. If you want something a bit more personal, every month or so everyone on Patreon is invited to a group zoom. Meanwhile, be kind, especially to yourself.
Al
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